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Recruitment fraud : Time to look beyond resumes

Last week, IBM was fined US$ 44,000, to settle a case alleging it violated the anti-discrimination law by placing online job openings that sought software developers with ‘specific visas’. The US dept of Justice believed these online job postings gave preference to a certain class of workers – those with ‘specific’ visas, and prohibited others from even applying to these jobs.

The online recruiting platform has primarily been a way of connecting job seekers with employers in a shortest time possible. Traditionally recruitment consultants have used job portals for short listing relevant candidates as per the clients brief and expectations. And the ability to mine the candidate database, short-listing them, managing their responses and the ease/efficiency of doing the same are the most critical factors on which the efficacy of the recruitment service depends.

While Naukri.com has been able to sustain its market share through effectively implementing these methods, it has earned a first mover advantage by starting early in this space, alternate sources of recruitment like social recruitment (Linkedin) and advanced search technologies (semantic search used by Monster) have however steadily emerged over the years.

Semantic search technology used by Monster.com has helped in filtering resumes by breaking them, structuring the data according to certain key attributes (skills, job designation, work history, education) and substantially reduced the resume database to a list of matching resumes without much of human intervention. Availability of such technologies were a big advantage for the recruiters who only purchased relevant resumes from the recruitment portal, reducing both the cost and time of short-listing.

In recent times, Linkedin has emerged as a professional portal, that has increasingly become a medium for networking, job listing and passive recruiting. It provides a unique ‘social’ recruiting platform, that has attracted corporates to post jobs, connect with those who are not actively looking to change job – building a talent pipeline and recruiting for higher level posts.

From a job seeker perspective, the social recruitment portals help stay connected professionally and serves as a medium of alternative resume for hiring managers.

The add on features like recommendation and endorsements claim to add credibility to the member profiles, but are unreliable in assessing candidates.

Even committed LinkedIn users are often uncertain of which connection requests to accept, or which invitations to extend: Someone who regularly shares your blog posts on Twitter? That neighbour on your housing society committee? Your cousin’s girlfriend with the home catering business?

The problem of who to connect with on LinkedIn puzzles people precisely because the network itself is neither fish nor fowl. Is it a social network like Facebook, where your connections are “friends”? A public platform like Twitter, where people can see and judge you on the number of your followers? Or just a really awesome address book?

With the fast accelerating globalization, the challenges faced by organizations increase. The menace of verifying a false identity online is frustrating and time consuming; and increases the growing underground economy further, when the job seeker data is sold to recruiters adding more to the chaos. (Source: Your LinkedIn profile is often sold to recruiters)

But when we look at an organization, it is important to know that every organization often has a “picture” of an ideal employee based on the perception rather than the information available.

A new kid on the block has recently emerged, that delivers more than it promises – Lookbeyondresumes.com. The process employed by this unique job portal utilizes the big data technology where information and powerful data mining algorithms are implemented, to search and short list superior talent based on patterns. Patterns which are relevant to a role, function, company and an industry. These algorithms enable an employer to short list smarter and a job seeker to apply better – all happening in the background.

The best part is that the pattern matching engine keeps adapting itself to the changes in the environment, getting better at identifying the best with each new hire. It is like a personal Google to help make better employment decisions both to the job seeker as well as the recruiter.

While LinkedIn does not capture the personality and psycho metric traits of a candidate; which are very critical for determining the performance of the employee in any organization, LookBeyondResumes, begins by creating holistic profiles with all the skill and personality attribute sets pre- mapped. It captures the personality of the candidates through their proprietary personality assessment tools creating a publicly viewable ‘attribute dashboard’. And the real time analytics for matching the right candidate comes from the algorithm itself, that maps the right candidate for the right job instantaneously, a feature that works with precision every time a profile is created.

As technology will continue to evolve, making the process of recruitment efficient, what advice can you give to discourage the fraudulent use of job portals? How do you respond to particular job listings from foreign recruiters when the rule of the land itself is unknown?

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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It is estimated that over 100 million people will migrate between 2015 and 2050. Developing countries will supply manpower to numerous aging populations to meet skill shortages that are already showing. That will mean large-scale migration across continents. No wonder most countries have put immigration procedures for qualified immigration on top of their agenda.
Globalization forces people into migration into countries where the ideas of divide and rule have been codified as a "legal" justification for the injustices. Inequality therefore is re-created and re-introduced by a global economic system.
In the realm of social reality - this social inequality creates a caste system, where one class of workers is pitted against the other for personal gain. Where when one side of the coin gets tainted, the other side shines brightly, putting the society at large in a conundrum.
This blog examines the globalized political and economic system that creates illegality by displacing people and then denying the guest workers rights and equality as they have to do what they have to do in order to survive.

Author

Rajiv has over 25 years of experience in education and technology sectors. Rajiv has lived in the United States for more than a decade helping large companies deal movement of global talent.
Rajiv has been a proponent of migration for over a decade and has actively moved forward the debate on Indo-American work visa related migration policies. He is the Founder of The National Organisation for Software and Technology Professionals, in 2004. He has authored two books – "American Work Permit – Official Rules & Regulations of American Work Visa" and "Green Carrot – America's Work Visa Crisis". He is interviewed in over 200 articles in over 30 leading publications both in India as well as the United States.
He has testified against the work visa program abuse and assisted in the drafting of the 'Visa Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act of 2007' to prevent visa misuse and document fraud in the immigration process. His research work has been cited by the UK Border Agency as well as the US Homeland Security.

Rajiv has over 25 years of experience in education and technology sectors. Rajiv has lived in the United States for more than a decade helping large compani. . .

Blog

It is estimated that over 100 million people will migrate between 2015 and 2050. Developing countries will supply manpower to numerous aging populations to meet skill shortages that are already showing. That will mean large-scale migration across continents. No wonder most countries have put immigration procedures for qualified immigration on top of their agenda.
Globalization forces people into migration into countries where the ideas of divide and rule have been codified as a "legal" justification for the injustices. Inequality therefore is re-created and re-introduced by a global economic system.
In the realm of social reality - this social inequality creates a caste system, where one class of workers is pitted against the other for personal gain. Where when one side of the coin gets tainted, the other side shines brightly, putting the society at large in a conundrum.
This blog examines the globalized political and economic system that creates illegality by displacing people and then denying the guest workers rights and equality as they have to do what they have to do in order to survive.

Author

Rajiv has over 25 years of experience in education and technology sectors. Rajiv has lived in the United States for more than a decade helping large companies deal movement of global talent.
Rajiv has been a proponent of migration for over a decade and has actively moved forward the debate on Indo-American work visa related migration policies. He is the Founder of The National Organisation for Software and Technology Professionals, in 2004. He has authored two books – "American Work Permit – Official Rules & Regulations of American Work Visa" and "Green Carrot – America's Work Visa Crisis". He is interviewed in over 200 articles in over 30 leading publications both in India as well as the United States.
He has testified against the work visa program abuse and assisted in the drafting of the 'Visa Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act of 2007' to prevent visa misuse and document fraud in the immigration process. His research work has been cited by the UK Border Agency as well as the US Homeland Security.

Rajiv has over 25 years of experience in education and technology sectors. Rajiv has lived in the United States for more than a decade helping large compani. . .